Sacred Hearts

Ferrara, 1570. Sixteen-year-old Serafina is forced into the convent of Santa Caterina after her family refuses the marriage she desires. Famous for her singing but determined not to accept a religious vocation, she responds with silence, rage and attempts to escape. Suora Zuana, the convent’s practical infirmary mistress, is ordered to restore the newcomer’s health and obedience.

The abbess must preserve the convent’s music, finances and internal peace while Catholic reform brings stricter enclosure and closer supervision of women’s religious houses. Serafina’s resistance exposes divisions between vocation, family strategy and institutional survival, forcing Zuana to choose between the rules that gave her a place in the community and the young woman whose confinement she understands.